About the Journal
Journal of Radical Librarianship (ISSN 2399-956X) is an open access journal publishing high quality, rigorously reviewed and innovative scholarly work in the field of radical librarianship. It also publishes non-peer reviewed reports, commentary, and reviews. The scope of the journal is any work that contributes to a discourse around critical library and information theory and practice. The subject areas listed below should be regarded as indicative rather than exhaustive.
The General Editor is Steve Bales (Texas A&M University Libraries). For the peer-reviewed section, there are currently eighteen section editors with responsibility for articles in their subject area:
- Politics and social justice - Ian Clark, Jeremy Brett, Molly Mann, John Pateman, Sam Popowich
- Information literacy - Lauren Smith, Molly Mann, Tina Budzise-Weaver
- Digital rights - Simon Bowie
- Anti-racist theory, critical race analysis, anti-colonial studies - David James Hudson
- Scholarly communication - Kevin Sanders, Ian McCullough
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion - Lauren Smith, Edgardo Civallero, Shelby Hebert
- Gender variance, queer theory, and phenomenology - Mary Catherine Lockmiller
- Political economy of information and knowledge - Kevin Sanders, Sam Popowich, Mikael Lövgren
- Technology and data - Lindsay Cronk, Simon Bowie, Sinziana Paltineanu
- Critical pedagogy - Sinziana Paltineanu
- Sustainability and environmentalism - Edgardo Civallero, Shelby Hebert
- Labor - Ian McCullough, Emma Barton-Norris
The Book Review Editor is Emma Barton-Norris (Bowdoin College).
The special collection 'Race and Power in Library and Information Studies' consists of five research articles published in 2019 that were edited by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango and David James Hudson.
Peer review process
All research submitted to Journal of Radical Librarianship are initially assessed by the editorial team, who decide whether or not the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to one or more (usually two) independent experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology. The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts without sending them for formal review if they fall outside of the scope of the journal.
All research articles submitted for peer review are assessed by external experts in one of two ways - within an open peer review system, or within a traditional anonymous peer review system. The decision on which method to use lies in the hands of the author(s) and reviewers. For each submission, the author(s) and both reviewers state whether or not they agree to open peer review. If all three parties agree, then open peer review is conducted; if any one party disagrees, then a standard anonymous review is carried out.
The journal strives to make the peer review process as open as possible and the editors encourage two-way dialog during the review process. If open peer review is carried out, then authors can expect to know who is reviewing their submission, and see a full disclosure of the comments provided by the reviewer to editors.
The editors understand that there are costs and benefits to both open and closed systems of peer review, so we will accept submissions from authors who do not wish to undergo open peer review at this time.
In the case of editors submitting, the submission will be handled by other members of the team who must adhere strictly to the recommendations of external reviewers.
We work hard to make this process as fast and efficient as possible. We also ask our reviewers to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for the journal.
Publication frequency
Journal of Radical Librarianship publishes on a continual basis. This means that articles are published, under a volume number, as soon as they are ready. Volumes are numbered yearly.
Open access policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a more equitable global exchange of knowledge.
Works are released under one of two licenses: either a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY) license, which provides unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited; or authors may choose to waive all ownership rights by publishing under a Creative Commons CC0 (Public Domain) dedication.
Authors of articles published in Journal of Radical Librarianship remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to terms of the Creative Commons license agreement they choose (either CC BY or CC0).
Self-archiving policy: authors are permitted, and encouraged, to deposit any version of their article - submitted, accepted, and published versions - in subject and institutional repositories at any time. This policy is included in Sherpa Romeo.
If you have any queries about the choice of license, or which to discuss other options, please contact us at journal-editors@radicallibrarianship.org
Open data policy
Authors of research papers submitted for publication in Journal of Radical Librarianship are encouraged to make any data underlying their articles openly available online whenever possible. For the purposes of this policy, the term "data" is understood broadly and refers to both quantitative and qualitative research outputs.
Data should be deposited in an open access research archive with an appropriate open license. Acceptable archives include any secure repository that provides a persistent identifier, assures long-term access, and provides sufficient documentation and metadata to support re-use by other investigators. This could either be an institutional repository or offical data archive for your discipline, or alternatively the cross-disciplinary archive Zenodo can be used by all researchers to deposit files in any format.
We recommend that whenever possible authors explicitly define the terms of re-use by assigning a license to their data, preferrably a CC0 license.
Every research article submitted should include a data availability statement. If data cannot be shared for ethical reasons, please explicitly state this in the data availability statement.
Name change policy
If an author changes their name in part or in full, for any reason, they may wish to retroactively change their name on prior publications. Any author of a Journal of Radical Librarianship article who wishes to do this can contact us and we will respect the author's new name and make the change for you. The name can be changed on both the article landing page and also the published PDF. The journal will not issue a notice of correction for the name change or notify co-authors or editors.
Archiving and indexing policy
Journal of Radical Librarianship is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH and is indexed by the PKP Index. We deposit copies of all articles in the E-LIS subject repository and in addition we recommend that all authors deposit a copy of their article with their institutional repository. We strive to participate in CLOCKSS when budget allows (the journal's budget is currently zero), and will join the PKP LOCKSS program when possible.
Privacy policy
Journal of Radical Librarianship has a commitment to intellectual freedom. We do not to collect or store the unnecessary personally identifiable data of our user communities, and we have thus minimised the data traces that occur through interacting with our services. Our systems clear personal data, data such as the IP addresses of incoming traffic, every 24 hours.
Any personally identifiable data provided, including names and email addresses provided by those those who sign up to the website, will only be used for activities related to the management of the journal, and will never be provided to external parties or used for activities unrelated to the journal.
The journal is available as an onion service via https://xovxbyhwll3qpfsz.onion/, and we would encourage users wishing to maximise their privacy to access this journal website via Tor Browser (please see https://moananddrone.github.io/bag-of-onions for information about this).
Advertisement policy
This journal does not display advertisements or receive any money for advertisements.
